Published on the 20th May 2025 by ANSTO Staff
The year 2025 marks the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Metre Convention—a milestone that underscores a century and a half of international collaboration in measurement science.
The official recognition of World Metrology Day as a UNESCO International Day represents an extraordinary opportunity to promote the pivotal role of metrology in building a sustainable future.
Marie Skłodowska-Curie is well known around the world as the person who discovered the radioactive element radium. Her studies included an additional experiment that was the foundation of an entire scientific discipline: radionuclide metrology.
The Bureau of International Weights and Measures (BIPM) was founded in 1875 to ensure that nations used comparable weights and measures, initially focusing on mass and length.
In 1910, Marie Skłodowska-Curie was asked by the International Radium Standards Commission to prepare an international standard for radium. She prepared a radium standard by accurately weighing a quantity of pure radium chloride. This was compared with radium samples made in Vienna, using two different radiation measurement methods. The two samples “agreed perfectly with one another within the limits of error of the measurements”.
She entrusted her radium standard to the BIPM for safekeeping and use in further comparisons.
At ANSTO, the Radionuclide Metrology group participates in comparisons of the activity of radionuclides in the same way Marie Skłodowska-Curie did, although with more sophisticated measurement techniques and equipment.
Using careful measurements of mass, radionuclidic purity and amount of activity, the group participates in such comparisons on behalf of Australia. This provides the scientific foundation for trade and research with other nations.
Thanks to the Radionuclide Metrology group for the assistance with this article.
Research physicist Dr Scott Chambers noted that a close collaborator, Annette Rottger from the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) (the National Metrology Institute of Germany) is currently in Paris participating in the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Metre Convention.
“Annette and her partner Stefan performed the first every traceable calibration of an ANSTO radon detector a few years back in the PTB controlled climate chamber. They just recently developed a new traceable in situ pulse calibration technique–something that I’m sure Marie Skłodowska-Curie would have been interested in!” said Dr Chambers.
